The Conquest of Labor

The Conquest of Labor is the first biography of Daniel Pratt, a New Hampshire native who became one of the South's most important industrialists. After moving to Alabama in 1833 Pratt started a cotton gin factory near Montgomery that by the eve of the Civil War had become the largest in the world. Pratt and his economic agenda-industrialization, chartering banks, building railroads- proved popular in Alabama. Although historians have portrayed Pratt as politically and culturally isolated and at odds with an agrarian region, Evans demonstrates that Pratt succeeded both in utilizing skilled and unskilled southern white labor in his factories and in fashioning a culturally sophisticated town.